The number of homeless people in San Diego County has dropped for the third year in a row, according to a report released Thursday by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless.

The report highlighted the results of an early-morning count taken in January that found there were 8,520 homeless people throughout the county, a 4 percent drop from last year’s count of 8,879. The homeless population was 9,236 in 2012.

Of those counted, 3,985 were on the streets — a 13 percent decrease from last year — and 4,535 were in shelters, up 5 percent from last year.

Task force Executive Director Dolores Diaz said she applauded efforts to help the county’s homeless and was pleased to see the numbers drop, but also stressed that more work needed to be done.

“We have a long way to go,” she said. “We still have some work to do as a region.”

Past national reports from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development have found San Diego County had the fourth largest homeless population in the nation. HUD mandates the counts for cities that apply for federal money for homeless programs.

The homeless population in the city of San Diego declined from 5,733 to 5,213 in the past year. About 63 percent of the county's homeless population was in the city.

Escondido had the second highest homeless population of cities in the county with 554 people, an increase of 18 from last year.

Cities and unincorporated communities in inland North County together had 967 homeless people, or about 12 percent of the county’s total.

About 10 percent of the homeless population was in South County, 9 percent were in East County and 7 percent in coastal North County.

The report found the homeless population in downtown San Diego dropped from 896 to 626. Diaz said there had been a concerted effort to address homelessness downtown.

While the numbers dropped in San Diego, they went up in other cities. In El Cajon, the homeless population increased from 448 to 513, in Chula Vista it increased from 495 to 505, in National City it increased from 157 to 284 and in Escondido it increased from 536 to 554.

Homeless numbers decreased in several cities. Carlsbad’s homeless population dropped from 127 to 76, Oceanside’s dropped from 499 to 424 and Vista’s dropped from 443 to 400. Encinitas was about the same, increasing from 87 to 88.

National City has seen a consistent increase in homeless over three years, with a population that grew from 143 to 284.

San Diego’s homeless population has dropped from 6,046 to 5,213 over three years and Vista’s population dropped from 483 to 400 over that time.

But consistent trends aren’t prevalent in the data.

Over a three-year period, the homeless population increased and then decreased in Carlsbad and Oceanside. Over that same period, it went down and then up in El Cajon and Escondido.

Diaz acknowledged that the count, which is done by teams of volunteers with flashlights searching for people before dawn over 4,261 square miles, can be an imprecise task.

“Volunteers cannot count every canyon,” she said. “We have no way of knowing how many people were missed.”

In a news conference at the United Way office in San Diego, Diaz was hesitant to say why the number of homeless people appears to have declined countywide.

“I’d be speculating,” she said about the number of factors that could be contributing to the decline.

Diaz did note that efforts to help homeless people have increased among area municipalities, the Regional Continuum of Care Council and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Of the city of San Diego’s 5,213 homeless, 2,745 were in shelters, safe havens and transitional housing and 2,468 were unsheltered and sleeping vehicles, hand-built structures and tents.

The full report on the homeless count can be found online at the Regional Task Force on the Homeless website.